FBC Daily Devotional – June 15, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Tuesday to you. I hope that this is the morning time. You're starting your day off on a good note, a positive note, getting into the

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Word and meditating on a little bit. Perhaps you have already gone to the passage of Scripture in the reading today.

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If you get the, I send out emails with the devotional video, you know, a link to the devotional video, and it takes you to a web page on my personal website and pastor's page and on that page

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I include the daily reading schedule. So for today the reading was in Deuteronomy chapters 2 & 3 as well as Psalm 67.

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Well, if you've already read that, you read in Deuteronomy 2 & 3 Moses rehearsing some of what the

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Lord's already done for his people. And just to remind you the setting of the book of Deuteronomy, it's at the end of Moses's life he's about to pass away, he's about to die, and the children of Israel are about to cross the

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Jordan River and go into the land of promise and take that land that God has promised to give to them.

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But before they do that, before Moses passes off the scene and they cross into the land of promise,

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Moses takes the time to rehearse the law with Israel, that which God gave to them almost 40 years earlier from this time.

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And in the process of this giving of the law, he also just rehearses all that God has done for them over these last four decades.

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And in this particular passage, in chapter 2 especially, he focuses on how the

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Lord delivered these two kings on the east side of the Jordan River, Og and the king of Bashan and Sihon, the king of the

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Amorites. And I wanted to focus in on one idea that is brought out here when it comes to Israel fighting against King Sihon, king of the

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Amorites. And it's a rather profound statement that the

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Lord makes that is very difficult for us to wrap our heads around. But I think it's an important truth to understand and to, by faith, accept and acknowledge.

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So when Moses rehearses this, he begins in verse 26 talking about how Moses sent messengers to Sihon, the king of Heshbon, and he offered words of peace.

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He said, Moses said, let us pass through your territory. We're not going to take anything. We're not going to kill any livestock.

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We're just going to pass through. And if we get water, we'll pay for it.

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We're not even going to drink water out of your wells without paying for that water.

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Just let us pass through. We're going to pass through on foot, minimal footprint impact on the land.

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Let us pass through. And he reminds them, reminds Sihon, king of Heshbon, that the descendants of Esau, the

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Moabites, they allowed Israel to pass through. They allowed this arrangement and it worked fine.

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They didn't cause any harm to anybody and it was all well and good. But Sihon said no.

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And here's the verse that I wanted to focus on in verse 30. It says, but Sihon, king of Heshbon, would not let us pass through.

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Here's why. Did you catch this? He wouldn't let us pass through. Not because he was afraid that we might hurt the land or we might steal or plunder.

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Not because he was afraid that we might overtake him and destroy his rule.

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Nothing like that at all. He wouldn't let us pass through because the

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Lord your God, Moses says, hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate.

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The Lord so worked in Sihon's heart that he hardened it and wouldn't let him, let

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Israel just simply pass through. And why did he do that? Why did the

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Lord so harden his heart? He goes on to explain. He did that so that he might deliver him into your hand as it is this day.

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So put that all together. We asked him for permission just simply to pass through the land.

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That's all we wanted to do. We had no other intentions. But Sihon said no.

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And the reason he said no is because God hardened his heart and wouldn't let him,

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God would not let him allow the people simply to pass through. And then the next thing

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Sihon does is he comes out to do battle with them. And what's the net result?

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The Israelites won, defeated Sihon king of Heshbon and all his people. And the

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Israelites took over his land by force. Not because they intended to but because God intended them to have that land.

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That's the thing. God, they didn't know it. Israel didn't know that God intended them to have that land.

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Didn't know that God intended them to overthrow Sihon. They had no intention of that whatsoever. But God had the plan, see.

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God had that purpose in his mind, in his will. And so to make his purpose, to fulfill his purpose and to see to it that it is accomplished, when

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Moses sent this offer of peace to simply let us pass through, God hardened

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Sihon's heart. It's the same thing that we saw back in Egypt with Pharaoh, right? The request is made by Moses, let us leave.

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And Pharaoh says no. Why? Because the Lord hardened his heart and he hardened his heart for his purposes, for the

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Lord's purposes. Now, what's the point that I want to get at here? What I want to get at is that it's, it is the, it is the

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Lord's prerogative in his sovereign will and for his sovereign purposes to harden whom he will even to their destruction.

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Now that's the Lord's prerogative. It's not our prerogative to try to decide who that is.

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Don't misunderstand me. It's not our place to make those kinds of judgment calls. This is more something that can maybe be discerned after the fact than before the fact or in the middle of it.

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See, when when Moses sent the request, he didn't know Sihon was gonna harden it, that the

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Lord was gonna harden Sihon's heart. And even when he heard the answer, no. He didn't necessarily know that the reason for that is because the

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Lord was hardening his heart so that Sihon might be destroyed. Moses didn't know that. He didn't know it until Sihon came out to do battle.

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Israel defeated them and destroyed Sihon and then he understood.

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The Lord gave him that understanding and that revelation. But the point I want to get at is, and I want us to grasp as best we can in our finite minds, is that our

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God, the God of the Bible, is a sovereign God and he is sovereign even over the hearts of men he will harden, whom he will harden, sometimes even for their destruction, but for his purposes, for his good purposes, that he chooses to accomplish.

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So, let's let's get that good understanding of our God and glorify him in that and praise him for his sovereignty.

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And so, our God, we do. We do. We don't always understand it. We can't always wrap our heads around it, but we do praise you for who you are and this passage before us today just shows us a very powerful display of how great your sovereignty is and to what detail that you would harden even the heart of a single man.

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So, Lord, help us to help us to understand that and to appreciate it and to glorify you in it. And this we pray.

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In Jesus name. Amen. All right. Well, now we are at the midway point of the month of June and I hope

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I hope you have a good rest of your day and God is blessing you richly this this month.